Love him or hate him, Vince McMahon is modern-day studio wrestling.
While calling the WWE the greatest spectacle in sports entertainment is pompous, you’ve got to hand it to Vinny. Although aided by his father owning the biz in the early years, McMahon had his hand in turning the World Wrestling Entertainment into a mega-dollar company, despite “inter-office” turmoil and the fact that wrestling is fake. No really, it is.
Helping McMahon and company achieve such a success with their fake sport is a very lucrative pull-through with merchandising. Everything from toys, air fresheners and clothing, to theme music CD’s and classic WWF DVD’s (with all of the logos blurred out to stave off any more lawsuits from the World Wildlife Fund) help to fill those arenas each and every week, not to mention their part in boosting Pay PerView sales.
And then there’s the video game. Video games have played their part in the WWF’s and WWE’s success throughout the years, dating back to the days when McMahon was a simple announcer and non-heel. There was even an old-school coin-op produced, not to mention a slew of titles during SEGA’s and Nintendo’s early-bit heydays. The wrestlers (Big Boss Man FTW!) changed from year-to-year of course, as did the fighting systems and graphics, but the one constant was the Japanese developer’s fascination with the sport, and their penchant for making spot-on recreations of McMahon’s flashy universe.
Yuke’s out of Japan was one of those developers caught up in the wrestling boom. Their mid-90’s Power Move grapplers earned them acclaim, which eventually led to myriad WWE games in the 2000’s for the Dreamcast, Playstation One and Two, the Gamecube and yes, even Microsoft’s original big, black box.
WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2007 saw Yuke’s move their wrestling game prowess onto the Xbox 360, and for the most part it was a success. Obviously the anticipation is high for today’s subject WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008, as it usually takes developers at least one title to feel out the new hardware and figure out exactly what it can and can’t do. A year later, it’s still obvious that Yuke’s knows how to concoct a good WWE game, but we’re still a little unclear if they have the whole progress concept down yet.
Before we get into what Yuke’s should have done for WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008, let’s look at what they did, in fact, do, and do well. In a word- graphics. WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008’s predecessor was a pretty solid game visually, but Yuke’s somehow managed to make their latest work the graphical equivalent of an Atomic Drop. The character models are even better than last year (still a tad greasy though, although maybe that was by design since most of these brutes are sweaty and Nair’d beyond belief), and the new characters brought over from the ECW look spot-on as well. There’s a greater amount of aesthetic fluidity to the entire production now; from ring entrances to just about every interaction the wrestler has with an opponent (some of the bigger moves still get choppy though). There’s also a greater sense of overall realism due to the reworked animations that lessen the “robot” factor that often plagues sports (well, entertainment) game characters. The new running dynamic is actually pretty realistic-looking too, not to mention it being a valuable tool that keeps the pacing of each match more realistic-feeling. Close-up facial expressions add to the visceral feel of WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 as well, especially when foes are involved in a Struggle Submission- the new interactive pain delivery system that adds a touch more skill to moves like the Figure 4 or the STF-U (parents - we’ll let your kids figure out what that stands for). What we see this year, we like for sure.
The entire visual presentation WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 is unquestionably impressive, which at first gave us a sense of hope that the gameplay would follow suit. But it seems as though Yuke’s wanted to add additional features to the same basic engine they had in place in SmackDown vs. Raw 2007, instead of fixing the anomalies that kept last year’s game from being great.
We like the work that Yuke’s put in to WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 to create clear fighting styles for each character. This is a great feature for the casual wrestling fan that may not realize that Mr. Hardy is an aerial master or that Batista is essentially an immovable object. But for the true wrestling and wrestling game fan, WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008’s Fighting Style system presents a problem….
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